air. We trace him through all the
succeeding explorations of the Bloody Ground, and of Tennessee, until so
many immigrants have followed in his steps, that he finds his privacy
too strongly pressed upon; until he finds the buts and bounds of legal
tenures restraining his free thoughts, and impelling him to the distant
and unsettled shores of the Missouri, to seek range and solitude anew.
We see him there, his eyes beginning to grow dim with the influence of
seventy winters--as he can no longer take the unerring aim of his
rifle--casting wistful looks in the direction of the Rocky Mountains and
the western sea; and sadly reminded that man has but one short life, in
which to wander.

No book can be imagined more interesting than would have been the
personal narrative of such a man, written by himself. What a new pattern
of the heart he might have presented! But, unfortunately, he does not
seem to have dreamed of the chance that his adventures would go down to
posterity in the form of recorded biography. We suspect that he rather
eschewed books, parchment deeds, and clerkly contrivances, as forms of
evil; and held the dead letter of little consequence. His associates
were as little likely to preserve any records, but those of memory, of
the daily incidents and exploits, which indicate character and assume
high interest, when they relate to a person like the subject of this
narrative. These hunters, unerring in their aim to prostrate the
buffalo on his plain, or to bring down the geese and swans from the
clouds, thought little of any other use of the gray goose quill, than
its market value.

Had it been otherwise, and had these men themselves furnished the
materials of this narrative, we have no fear that it would go down to
futurity, a more enduring monument to these pioneers and hunters, than
the granite columns reared by our eastern brethren, amidst assembled
thousands, with magnificent array, and oratory, and songs, to the memory
of their forefathers. Ours would be the record of human nature speaking
to human nature in simplicity and truth, in a language always
impressive, and always understood. Their pictures of their own felt
sufficiency to themselves, under the pressure of exposure and want; of
danger, wounds, and captivity; of reciprocal kindness, warm from the
heart; of noble forgetfulness of self, unshrinking firmness, calm
endurance, and reckless bravery, would be sure to move in the hearts of
their readers str